Thursday, March 29, 2007

While we've been in Delhi, we've started making it a habit to start the morning out right, not with the tedious Anderson Cooper or the slightly less boring BBC News, but instead with the Simpsons, which appears on the wonderful Star World at 8:30 AM. Star World is the expat American's friend -- it's got the OC, American Idol (current season), and a slew of other prime export-quality shows.

Anyway, yesterday's episode was titled Simple Simpson.In it Homer becomes a kind of pastry vigilante/superhero, getting back at bad people by throwing big fat pies in their face. It's all going wonderfully until he's caught by his boss Mr. Boss, who discovers his secret identity and threatens to reveal it unless he only pies people Mr. Burns is against. Girl scouts, that sort of thing.

But the episode's ending was confusing -- Lisa was introducing someone on stage, Homer was getting ready to pie whoever it was, and then suddenly Homer had a change of heart and gave up. At first I thought it was because there had been sloppy cuts because of ads or something, but then Don remembered that it's the Dalai Lama who's about to get a pie.

And that's when it made sense -- Star World broadcasts in China too, and the cuts were probably made to get past the censor there (See the above link for more). Sad that it also means a censored episode here in India as well.

[Update: the linked-to article claims without a citation that the Dalai Lama cut was done "to appease the predominantly Buddhist viewers of East, South, and Southeast Asia with regards to any view of mocking the Dalai Lama." Not sure which theory's right.]